“Want Backpain? Be A Schoolkid!”*

new-age tyrants like

the docile kids low backpacks

and carseats hath wrought.

*(While car seats are cool, one unintended consequence is the docilization of kids, especially boys who after a half-dozen years or so of slipping without fuss into the back seats even after they have graduated from crash-protective devices and now slip into those same seats still wearing their backpacks on and hunched over, do not but in rare instances suggest or get told by the driver to dump the bookbag into the trunk and sit near humanlike. And the backpacks – many are designed to be worn with the bulk under the shoulders and some – better designed – still are worn with the bulk of the mass low on the back, just above the hips. I have seen some kids with book bags bulking – and possibly weighing – as much if not more than the poor sixth grader to whom they are attached.

Get a grip, guys – and girls, though more of them seem sensible about dealing with backpacks and such – wear the packs high as you can on the shoulders and you will avoid the backpain then and later. Ask a soldier or Marine in the family or a friend how they were taught to wear backs and why. You can not run out of harm’s way with a thirty-pound backpack just over your butt flapping away – but you can if it’s worn high up on the shoulders.